The technology centre played a prominent role at the High Precision Conference (HPC2018), organised by CIRP in the Hungarian capital.

The most advanced systems for machine damping and the development of innovative solutions for providing stability to manufacturing processes are some of the areas in which IK4-IDEKO has shared its knowledge at the High Precision conference (HPC2018) , held from 25 to 27 June in Budapest.

Organised by the International Academy for Production Engineering (CIRP), the leading international organisation in research applied to Advanced Manufacturing, the HPC2018 is a key date for experts in technologically innovative production systems. The director of IK4-IDEKO's Dynamics and Control research line, Jokin Muñoa, a member of the scientific committee of the Congress, gave a keynote speech on the most advanced methods for increasing damping in machine tools. The specialist demonstrated the advantages of the new active damping system that has been developed within the framework of the MC-Suite European project, a research initiative led by the Elgoibar technology centre.

During his presentation, Dr. Muñoa gave industrial examples where damping reduced forced and self-excited vibrations.

While the researcher Zoltan Dombovari presented the latest innovations in milling process stability for parameters that vary slowly.

In machining operations, the dynamics vary along the trajectory of the tool in the working space and, specifically during large milling operations, the main source of the dynamics is related to the structure of the machine. Dombovari presented his research work on the effect that dynamic parameters that vary slowly represent for milling stability, when the cutting operation is carried out in a workspace area where a cutting state passes from stable to unstable. Furthermore, the specialist from the Manufacturing Process division, Iñigo Llano, told us about the most significant advances applied to ultrasonic assisted turning technology.

In this scientific field, Llanos explained how the machining of materials of difficult and low machineability, such as titanium, inconel, hard metals or ceramics, involves limitations that lead to low productivity in conventional machining processes due to the high cutting forces and wear of the tool.

In his presentation, the researcher demonstrated the possibilities that ultrasonic assisted turning (UAT) techniques had for significantly reducing these disadvantages, which allows productivity to be increased when machining these types of materials.

“Our research has demonstrated that reducing the cutting forces and controlling them achieves significant improvements with respect to the material removal rates (MRR) in processes in which the maximum cutting forces are limited due to deflections of the tool and the appearance of vibrations”, said Llanos.

The HPC2018 is the most important conference in the field of research applied to manufacture after the CIRP General Assembly, an event that will take place this year in August in Tokyo and in which IK4-IDEKO will feature prominently.